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The Obama Niebuhr connection

Forget Jeremiah Wright, the Democratic hopeful owes much more of his worldview to the flinty — eyed perspective of a long-dead, Christian Harvard theologian.

By Paul AllenSpecial to the Star

Sat., June 14, 2008

Earlier this month, Barack Obama talked about the hype surrounding him: "One thing I've learned about myself is that the surface glitter, the vanity element of this campaign, becomes less satisfying as I go along."

This may be false humility. But, it may also reveal a great deal about what Obama has read, understood and made his own: a moderate, Christian vision of things, a vision that tempers his view of himself, of human nature, of government. And this vision could alter American liberalism itself.

Asked last year by the Times' David Brooks about whether he had read the work of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Obama recalled Niebuhr from his days at Harvard as having a lasting influence. From Niebuhr, Obama gleaned that, "There's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism." He then called Niebuhr his "favourite philosopher."

This was Obama's first "Niebuhr" moment. But who is Reinhold Niebuhr and what does Obama's admiration of him imply?

A son of German immigrants, Reinhold Niebuhr was born in 1892 in Missouri. He served as a Lutheran pastor in Detroit, ministering to the families of autoworkers, seeing firsthand the hardships and drudgery of physically exhausting work. This experience led Niebuhr to blend faith with socialism, though more reluctantly than Canadian social gospel movement adherents like Tommy Douglas.

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Niebuhr ultimately rejected liberal theology and the pacifism of the social gospel. He settled instead for "Christian realism," a political theology that was later credited with confronting Nazism.

Niebuhr saw societies as fundamentally alienated from God. He claimed that, "The nation is as much the servant of the Devil as the servant of God." Against the idolatry of the state, he doesn't mince words: "The nation is ethically ambiguous ... it belongs to the Devil precisely because it claims to be God."

Despite his socialism, Niebuhr's thought is at variance with the liberal narrative of human progress. He saw that human beings, while capable of selflessness on an individual level, are socially and politically selfish. This is why Obama's reliance on Niebuhr, fleeting though it may appear, is revealing. It means that Obama does not view his own spectacular success as a mark of human progress only. The extent to which he can communicate this belief is the extent to which Obama can identify with American society, which is skeptical of the liberal narrative of progress. Obama can meet the religious right halfway – on Christian terms, in his own Niebuhrian way.

The Religious Right has fallen from grace. The evangelical vote is set to implode this year, leaving the Republicans bereft of their base. And Obama is positioned to give the conservative idea of self-sacrifice a liberal moral meaning it has not held since John F. Kennedy. When Obama said last year that he would tell Americans, "Not what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to know," he was warming up an electorate for Niebuhr-like realism. But, can he sell self-sacrifice?

Maybe. Obama is miles ahead of previous Democratic nominees in forging a fundamental realignment in American politics. Thanks to Niebuhr, Obama has thought about the human condition, in terms of our shared nature and sin, categories that most liberals have rebuked since before the 1960s.

Obama's classical liberalism is in line with that of Martin Luther King Jr., a politics of human dignity not racial identity. He is even attracting traditional conservatives for this reason, a group known as "Obamacons."

Obama's liberalism is not that of the perennial separation of church and state. His liberalism is born of the public implications of Christian faith, a recognition of the moral limits of the state and the individual. And, the key to the presidency may lie in Obama's ability to talk about his favourite philosopher and communicate this bracing political theology to the conservative instincts of evangelicals and Catholics in swing states such as Ohio, Virginia and Michigan.

For example, Obama's admission a few weeks ago at a religious left forum that "there is a moral dimension to abortion" was a candid moment along precisely this path. It corroborates with what he wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope, that the pro-life position is both reasonable and appealing, despite the fact that he has remained pro-choice.

This concession effectively challenges pro-choice dogma. And for that reason, it will be seen as common sense to many of his youthful supporters, who are generally more troubled by abortion than their parents' generation. Such candid talk can only win him long-term respect. Obama knows that liberalism cannot thrive on an ever-expanding laundry list of human rights and victimhood.

Obama relies on a theological worldview to guide him. This is guidance, we now know, that comes through his reading of Niebuhr, who was an American, Christian, socialist, traditionalist, realist sage of human nature. So, Obama has a choice to make: Come out swinging against the moral perils of greed, aggression, laziness and vice that threaten American culture and its economy, or play liberal politics as usual and risk losing an election in the swing states, an election that is his to lose.

If Obama chooses moral pugnacity over politics as usual, it will be his decisive Niebuhr moment.

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